Category: On the Web

Italy meets Texas with Pecaño, a pecan liqueur that appears to be inspired by the bittersweet liqueurs of Italy. As a native Texas, this sounds very interesting to me. They launched a Kickstarter today to bring it into full scale production.

Remember when Marc Ambinder cited unnamed “Obama aides and associates” claiming that in Obama’s second term he would tackle reform of the Drug War, and a few civil libertarians took this as reason, against all evidence, to think that his second term may be better? Well that could still happen, and I hope it does, but there is no sign of it yet. In a must-read article for the New York Times, Charlie Savage looks at the options the administration is exploring to undercut state marijuana legalization measures:

One option is for federal prosecutors to bring some cases against low-level marijuana users of the sort they until now have rarely bothered with, waiting for a defendant to make a motion to dismiss the case because the drug is now legal in that state. The department could then obtain a court ruling that federal law trumps the state one.

A more aggressive option is for the Justice Department to file lawsuits against the states to prevent them from setting up systems to regulate and tax marijuana, as the initiatives contemplated. If a court agrees that such regulations are pre-empted by federal ones, it will open the door to a broader ruling about whether the regulatory provisions can be “severed” from those eliminating state prohibitions — or whether the entire initiatives must be struck down.

Asked whether the middle-of-the-night marriage license roll-out was necessary, King County Executive Dow Constantine said, “People who have been waiting all these years to have their rights recognized should not have to wait one minute longer.”

“A 2010 survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American think-tank, found that 84% of Muslims in Egypt and 86% in Jordan backed the death penalty for apostates, compared with 51% in Nigeria and 30% in Indonesia.” — The Economist examines the challenges confronted by ex-Muslim atheists.

Today marks the ninth anniversary of this blog’s existence. This is also the year that I’ve pretty much given up on frequent updates as a means of driving traffic, finding that it’s more effective to focus on writing substantive content and disseminating links via Twitter and other social media (follow me at @jacobgrier!). But for old times’ sake, here’s a round-up of recent links that have caught my attention.

Last week’s discussion of Google’s self-driving cars has been fascinating; Tim Lee has a good post on the topic. If this technology lives up to its promise it will revolutionize cities and make investment in light rail and streetcars in low-density cities like Portland appear even more absurd. Why spend money on transit that is expensive, runs on a set track, and offers infrequent service if efficient self-driving cars are the way of the future?

Having already banned most kinds of flavored cigarettes, the federal government’s next step may be a ban on flavored cigars. FDA regulation of premium cigars is potentially devastating for the industry.

Californians have less than two months left to enjoy foie gras before it becomes illegal to serve in restaurants.

The dumbest story of the week was about Obama eating dog as a child. For a much more interesting look at the topic, see this recent NPR report about evolving norms in China. (I ate dog once. It tasted terrierble.)

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized.

“We are in solidarity with them even if they don’t know it.” An Occupy Portland protest intended to shut down the ports on Monday sent about 200 longshoremen home without pay, also affecting truckers. The protest was supposedly on behalf of the longshoremen, whose union opposed it. The arrogance of the protesters was remarkable.

Happy Repeal Day, everyone! Today is the anniversary of the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition. I wrote about the holiday for the American Spectator on its 75th anniversary in 2008.

The Occupy evictions have brought welcome attention to excessive force by police officers, but as Radley Balko writes, the militarization of American police forces has been going on for a long time.

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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, bartender, cocktail consultant, and magician in Portland, Oregon, and the author of Cocktails on Tap: The Art of Mixing Spirits and Beer. His articles have appeared in the print or online editions of The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, Reason, The Oregonian, Eater, and other publications. [Photo by Michael Ingram.]Image Source:kissmiss